DIY: The Expat Edition

For anyone who has lived abroad for at least a year, you know full well that desperate times call for desperate measures. And sometimes, it takes a lot to get used to your new surroundings--new language, new cultures, new fads, and new no-nos. In America, it might be safe to drink tap water but in other parts of the world, you might as well sign your own death sentence. Here in Bayannur, we wash our clothes by hand and we have to wait for the sun to heat up the water for our showers (that took us way too long to figure out!).




The life of a traveler is filled with adapting to new cultures... but there are some things that I find I just CANNOT give up, no matter how many places I've traveled or how hard I try to assimilate into the culture I live in.




Most times, you cannot easily find the things you love, celebrate, or crave... so it's up to you to get your hands dirty, get a little creative, and do it yourself!




Holidays


Holidays are always the toughest to try and celebrate when you're living in a country so different from your home. China is a perfect example. Staple holidays like Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Halloween do not exist over here and if it does, that's because tenacious expats make sure to find ways to celebrate.




Thanksgiving is easy enough to work with--you might have to eat chicken instead of turkey. One year I made chicken wing dip but couldn't find bleu cheese dressing so I had to go with "yoghurt dressing" whatever the hell that means. It turned out okay to the untrained laymen but Adam and I could taste the difference and it was unacceptable.

Those roots are unacceptable too...

 Christmas is pretty popular in China. As a matter of fact, some stores are STILL decorated. The only aspect of the holiday that I find a bit disappointing in the fact that it somehow hasn't made it's way over to China is the elusive pickle! It's a German tradition and one that my family has always celebrated. I won't go into the fact that for almost two decades Jed would destroy me... I don't think I ever actually found the pickle.

Back when I was actually taller than Jed. Moody teenage Amanda with her itty bitty prize and adorably awkward Jed with the pickle and his stupid big prize.

For those of you unfortunate souls who are neither German nor celebrate Christmas with the pickle, let me explain. Traditionally, the glass pickle is the last ornament to go on the Christmas tree and the child who is the first to find it gets an extra gift on Christmas Eve. Today, kids strangle and wrestle one another to try and get to the tree first. I've done this all my life and not once have I succeeded.


In China, it's a bit difficult to find a glass ornament in the shape of a pickle (shocking, I know!). So, one Christmas, while in China, Adam and I decided to improvise. Instead of a pickle we used a pepper... a real pepper.

It's Halloween that's the tough one to still find a way to celebrate, no matter where you are. Halloween is a sacred holiday for me, and so, no matter where I am--China or Russia it would seem--I find a way to celebrate.




In China, I managed to carve a jack-o-lantern out of a watermelon (you can read more about that here) and somehow it actually turned out awesome! That same year, I was able to introduce the art of pumpkin (watermelon) carving to my students at an English corner. They were able to realize just how much they were missing out in the glorious month of October.

It was interesting to find in Russia, too, Halloween is not nearly as popular (or at all) as in America. Actually, Putin has tried to outlaw public displays of Halloween frivolity in big cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg because he sees it as a negative Western influence, particularly coming from America. However, Novosibirsk is far away (I mean FAR away) from Moscow and so Halloween is a bit more accepted in the city. We actually had some Halloween parties with students and some teachers even dressed up.

Luckily for me, I was off on Halloween and had all day to celebrate. But once again, it was impossible to find pumpkins to carve! It was like China all over again. Instead of watermelons, we decided to actually buy gourds and carve them into jack-o-lanterns. I think there's a reason why pumpkins were chosen for carving (contrary to what you might think when you're trying desperately to carve a circle into a pumpkin)--they're easy to work with! At least easier than the evil gourds we picked.

FOOD

Now, a good traveler is one who is always brave and willing to try new foods and be content with eating the foods of the country they are visiting or residing in whether it's rice and noodles or cabbage and vodka. However, being content with what your specific country has to offer you can only last for so long and eventually the cravings begin to set in. Usually this is once the "wonderment" phase of culture shock passes and you suddenly realize you have absolutely no access to good beer, huge hunks of meat, or cheese. It's about one month in that rice, noodles, and vegetables just aren't good enough anymore and these cravings usually start. And it is at this time that--in order to survive--you must take matters into your own hands.

I've found that DIY food projects can either turn out really good or really really bad.

The Good: Chicken wings

For my 24th birthday, instead of going out to a fancy restaurant in Hangzhou, I wanted to attempt #139 from My Life List (you can read all about our kitchen escapades right here). And so with a bottle of Frank's and 25 chicken wings from the wet market, we attempted and--I'm proud to say--succeeded in making chicken wings that were good enough to appease this Buffalo girl.

 



The Bad: Mulled Wine


For every success in the DIY expat collection, there has to be an utter failure and that would be our attempt at hot mulled wine for Christmas 2013. We figured we had cinnamon sticks, an orange, and come cloves--why not throw it in and heat up some of our leftover Chinese red wine? SUGAR. No one told us to add sugar. So, no surprise, it was terrible. We've gotten better at it! But I suppose we had nowhere to go but up.

We've done a few other DIYs over the years. Christmas ornaments, attempts at making bacon only to realize you bought pork organs and not pork, baking brownies from hot chocolate packets when you don't have cocoa powder, making olive brine by adding saltwater to your olives for the perfect martini, and building furniture out of scraps of wood you find lying against the garbage shoot (this totally worked but sadly we have no photos which is a shame!).


This past week, we've continued on in the DIY tradition by successfully making two things of food (you can clearly see that most of this post is about food... mainly because I'm hungry at the moment): homemade jiaozi 饺子 (basically dumplings you can boil, steam, or fry) and cheese!


Jiaozi 饺子:


I am a big fan of jiaozi. Ever since moving to China, they are some of my go to meals. In Hangzhou, they were usually beef or pork but here in Bayannur, most of them are mutton (Yang Rou 羊肉). Around here, they seem to be steamed usually which is fine but sometimes you just want something unhealthy and fried... and that's just what we did.


Taking what little mutton we had left from our Easter celebrations, we marinated it with the few spices we've come to recognize over here and I set to work on making the wonton wrappers. In America, you can find these bad boys at any Asian market. Around here? Not so much. Homemade from scratch it is!


All you really need for this is water, salt, and egg mixed nicely together before pouring it into the middle of a bowl of flour and some more water before you mix, mix, mix until it creates a nice dough ball. Wrap it and let it sit for 30 minutes. Once you've let it settle, it's time to bust out the rolling pin. Sadly, we didn't have a rolling pin or a wooden dowel so I improvised and used a wine bottle (I swear I'm not an alcoholic). It's a bit tough getting the dough as thin as it needs to be and after you're covered in flour and your hands are aching, you understand why you go out and buy these premade in America.

While I continued to roll and cut the dough into thin 3x3 squares, Adam began to fill them with our delicious mutton and eggs cooked in the mutton fat (trust me, it was more fat than meat). In the end, we had almost 30 dumplings to either steam or fry.

Since this was my master plan (at least in my head I knew it could work), I was in charge of cooking these little guys. Now, I'm the first to admit that I'm not the best chef in the world. Sure, I make a mean stuffed banana pepper soup but it's one thing going from a recipe and making stuff up as you go and hoping that it will all work out in the end. This had been hours of prepping, rolling, and stuffing... I couldn't mess it up now! No pressure...



Ignore our nasty little kitchen...

If the smell was any indication, things turned out better than I anticipated.


Low and behold! Our steamed and fried jiaozi turned out great (though they do kind of look like little turds) and they tasted even better.

Our first DIY of Bayannur was a huge success! But, I was determined to try something a bit harder and something I craved even more.

CHEESE

Cheese is just one of those things that you either love it or you hate it and I have a passionate love affair with it. The biggest downside of living in China (apart from being so far away from family) is the total and complete lack of cheese. I assumed that Bayannur might be a bit different from Hangzhou--dairy is actually a big part of life here in Inner Mongolia. You can find milk and yoghurt at every store you walk into but for some reason, cheese is still a myth over here.

So when I found cheesecloth at the night market, you can be darn sure I found a challenge on my hands.

Now cheese is hard because many of them require bacteria cultures which even if I could find over here I doubt I would dare use it in my food. But luckily, I found a recipe for Farmer's Cheese with just three ingredients: milk, white vinegar, and sea salt.



For anyone interested in trying this on your own, here's how we did it!


Pour one gallon of milk into a pot. It should not be super pasteurized and the pot should have a nice thick bottom. Sadly, we had to buy 15 little boxes of milk to get to a gallon... it should be easier in America!

Over medium heat, bring the milk to a boil. This takes a bit of time... It will start curdling on top so you should keep stirring it pretty frequently so it doesn't burn to the bottom. I thought I was stirring it enough but at the end I saw I had scorched it pretty bad.


As soon as the milk starts to boil, reduce the heat to low and add 1/2 cup of white vinegar. Almost immediately, the milk should start separating into curds and whey (I had no idea it was a greenish blue! Little Miss Muffet what is wrong with you?!?). If it doesn't, keep adding vinegar, one tablespoon at a time. It will be obvious when it starts working.

I'm not going to lie, I kind of lost it at this point. I started jumping up and down and shouting, "SCIENCE!" over and over again as the curds continued to form.

My SCIENCE! face.

At this point, the science part is done. Take your cheesecloth and line a colander with it and begin to scoop the curds out of the pot and into the cheese cloth. This kind of cheese is very crumbly and is in little pieces so make sure to get it all. You'll be surprised by how much cheese this actually makes!

 Once all of the curds are in the cheesecloth, rinse them with cold water to get rid of any of the extra whey. Once they're nice and clean, sprinkle the sea salt on top. The recipe I used said two teaspoons, however, this cheese is pretty bland so I would recommend more (I'm even thinking of adding garlic or onions or little peppers the next time I try this). Once the curds are salted. tie the cheese cloth, squeeze it tight to get rid of any more whey and excess water and then you should find a nice place to hang it up! It is still a bit wet so we hung it up over our sink so if it dripped it wouldn't make a mess.


After two hours of impatiently waiting, we nervously opened up the cheese cloth and voila! Our very first attempt at cheese!

And this cheese is good for up to about a week!


I was surprised by how easy this was and how well it turned out on our first try. So far we're two for two in the DIY attempts here in Bayannur. I know sooner or later we're bound to fail miserably but for now I will happily eat my jiaozi and cheese and continue counting down the 82 days until I am drowning in good beer, burgers, wings, and cheese... so much cheese.


Until Next Time,
Amanda

Happy 清明节!

Different cultures have different ways of declaring that Spring has finally sprung, whether it is daffodils sprouting on your lawn and trees blooming, or holidays such as Holi in India and Qingming in China.

This weekend in China is the official start of spring and it is being rung in with the celebration of QingMing (清明) or the Tomb Sweeping Festival. While it isn't one of the biggest holidays in China, we still get off work/school so that is a good enough reason to celebrate in my book!

This holiday originated from the Cold Food Festival (寒食節), dating back to the Spring and Autumn Period (770-470BCE). It was a festival to honor and remember the life and work of Jie Zitui. Jie was the guard and confidant of Chong'er, Duke Wen of Jin. He was so loyal, he stayed with Duke Wen throughout his years of exile and, according to legend, even cut off a bit of his thigh to make sure the Duke had meat in his soup. Once Duke Wen was returned to the throne, Jie retired from his duties and hid in the forest with his mother. Duke Wen, desperate to continue to have Jie's guidance, decided to burn the forest in order to force Jie out... We all know how that ends.

Sadly, Jie and his mother were both burnt to death in the fire. Duke Wen, overcome with guilt and grief, ordered three days of no fire in honor of Jie (hence "cold food" festival). While this is an ancient tale and could very well be more legend than historical fact, you can still find evidence of it's truth--the place where the fire took place is now called Jiexiu which means Jie's Rest.



Duke Wen reigned from 636-628BCE

But if we look at Qingming, today, it is not in honor of a Duke's advisor and confidant who died tragically over 2,000 years ago. The version of the holiday we celebrate today was created over a thousand years later by Emperor Xuanzong of Tang (Emperor Ming for short). At this time in Chinese history there was an extremely wide gap between the wealthy and the poor of China and nobles enjoyed spending enormous amounts of money on celebrations and festivals to honor their ancestors. Emperor Ming, hoping to put a stop to the frivolous spending, declared that there would be a holiday dedicated to remembering and honoring one's ancestors and that would be the only time in the year that anyone--nobleman or farmer--could honor their ancestors in such a way. Today, we call it Qingming or the Tomb Sweeping Festival.

Emperor Ming... my, what a guy! Thanks for the day off!

The name gives everything away--Tomb Sweeping. Chinese--both mainland and those living overseas--visit the tombs of their ancestors: whether they died last year or a hundred years ago. They clean the tomb (shock shock!), decorate it with flowers, burn incense and fake paper money, and they also offer food to their ancestors. Many people also purchase willow branches to carry around in order to ward off evil spirits that might also be wandering around on Qingming.

Fake money to burn for your ancestors--sometimes they are modern day bills with Mao on them and other times they are more traditional.

Here we can see food offerings for the ancestors as well as the beautiful decorations left in their honor. 

For a country that is moving forward and developing so quickly, it's nice to know that at least once a year, many still return to their family tomb and remember their ancestors and show respect and love for their family.

And of, course a Chinese holiday would be incomplete without a special food you're supposed to eat. Mid-Autumn Festival has moon cakes and Dragon Boat Festival has zhongzi. For Qingming, we eat qingtuan which are green dumplings made of glutinous rice and either Chinese mugwort or barley grass. Sadly, I have not managed to find these yet.

While Qingming may not be the most popular holiday in China (let's be honest, it's no Spring Festival), it is still important... so much so that you can find similar customs in different cultures all over the world. It's so similar to our Halloween and Mexico's Día de Muertos with the idea that the veil between Here and There is thin enough for the spirits of our loved ones and ancestors to return and visit us. Halloween has definitely taken on a much more secular, fun path while  Día de Muertos is still very much about honoring those who have already journeyed on ahead of us.

We see so many other similar festivals made to honor and remember those we love who are gone too soon. All Soul's Day is still practiced in Catholic parts of Europe. The Bon Festival (お盆) in Japan is held in August as a part of the Ghost Month.  And there's Gaijatra (गाई जात्रा) in Nepal, Chuseok (추석) in Korea, Pitru Paksha (पितृ पक्ष) in India.

One of the more interesting ones takes place in Madagascar. Every seven years in winter (which is actually June to September down under), the people of Madagascar take part in Famadihana, or the festival of Turning the Bones. Family members return to the family tomb and pull out the bodies of their dead relatives. With music and dancing they rewrap the bodies in silk scarves and spray perfume on them before parading around the tomb and being placed back inside. This may seem morbid to some of us, but it comes from the Malagasy belief that a person's spirit cannot enter the afterlife until their body is completely decomposed.

Sorry... I really like the macabre...

Anyway!

We are now off school until Tuesday (which is actually my usual schedule each week but I'll still take it). Yesterday, we wandered downtown... not to get qingtuan but a pizza buffet instead (no judging). While walking around we were able to see the difference in street vendors as the Tomb Sweeping Festival crept closer and closer. There are carts lining the sidewalk, selling incense and paper money for you to burn at altars and tombs. Old ladies sell beautiful paper flowers to decorate gravesites. We even saw a few men selling palm branches (at the time, we didn't know it was anything special--but remember: if you carry around a palm branch on the day of Qingming, you can protect yourself from any evil spirit that might cross your path).

This is on our street corner across from the super market.

I have to say it's interesting, being on this side of a death. In the past I would see Qingming as a romantic holiday, thinking back to all the love that led to you. Don't get me wrong--I'm not a stranger to people I know and love dying. My best friend died in a tragic accident when I was only nine. I lost three of my grandparents when I was nineteen. For years, I've encountered death and moved on... But my brother's death last April is one of those moments in your life that both haunts you and shapes you for the rest of your days. Sadly, being a member of the cancer community now, your life is filled with bad news and deaths far too soon--just two months ago now (how has it only been two months?) Jed's best friend's dad and our family friend, Dan Hughes, passed away after his epic battle with cancer. Because of how prevalent death has now become in my life, I see Qingming in a very different way than I did my first year in China. It's not a romantic holiday... if anything, people are grieving and it should be respected as it is celebrated.

I do think it's interesting that Qingming--a holiday intended to remember and honor family members who have died--falls in the same week as the one year mark of Jed passing away. I get a sort of Twilight Zone, are you f***ing kidding me feeling right about now (but not as much as the fact that Hong Kong Disneyland's Pin Trading Fun Day falls exactly on April 8th... one of Jed's favorite things to collect and do).

So even though I have no tomb to sweep, no money to burn, and no qingtuan to eat, I am joining the Chinese as they remember, mourn, and honor their family who have journeyed on, whether it was a thousand years ago or just one painfully long year ago...

 

 

Until Next Time,
Amanda